The Crosswood

The Crosswood — page 3 — The twins My brother and sister They are nearly ten Their names are Indigo a boy and Violet a girl And they are in my mother’s words holy terrors I don’t see how that’s my problem It is nearly dinnertime I’ve spent most of the day chasing after the twins in the yard I am over it Over them and their antics Indigo filled his pockets with beetles I think he might have eaten one Violet got sap in her hair and a pine needle in her eye They both lost their socks How do you lose socks in your own yard I’ll tell you Somehow you throw them up into the tallest tree If I lean out the woodshed door I can still see them up there Indigo’s mismatched blue and white socks Violet’s red socks one with a hole in the toe I have no idea how they got them up there Neither does Mom even though she watched us all day from where she was building a chair on the porch Blue get back here Indigo is in the rafters again Mom never lets the twins out of her sight She even homeschools them I take the bus to the 2

The Crosswood — page 4 — school in town But the twins get to stay here in our cabin at the edge of the woods I’m pretty sure they just run around all day I don’t think they learn much But they don’t need to They’re both weirdly smart Unlike me I’m weirdly average The twins are weirdly weird actually I know it’s normal for little kids to have active imaginations but wow Indigo and Violet take it to new levels They claim they’re royalty They tell me their real last name is Nash Panash Buckthorn Briar It’s not It’s Jasper same as mine They talk to fireflies Only not in English Not in any language I recognize They speak it to each other too Mom says that’s normal for twins But nothing is normal about Indigo and Violet They drive me crazy BLUE Get in here NOW I’m fourteen I’m starting high school at the end of this summer Ninth grade I’m going to have enough stress I’ll have to take a new bus to a different town I’ll have to get up earlier I’ll probably have a ton more 3

The Crosswood — page 5 — homework I’m not going to have as much time to help with the twins Mom is going to have to get used to that I’ve tried to convince her to let Indigo and Violet go to school But she won’t listen If they went to school at least she’d have some time to herself As it is the only time she gets is after the twins go to sleep And they only do that after being read about a hundred fairy tales I help out around the house I sweep every day and wash the dishes I even chop wood for our woodstove Yep we have a woodstove Our little cabin is like something from another time Sure we have a proper toilet and electric lights but that’s about it The woodstove is for cooking and heating Our fridge runs off a solar battery For entertainment we have books No TV no internet To make a phone call Mom sends me up to the highway where I can get a weak signal on her cell phone A ten-minute walk Five minutes if I run Off-grid Mom calls it Off-planet is more like it 4

The Crosswood — page 6 — It’s just the four of us Mom the twins and me No dad My dad left when I was a baby And the twins dad well I don’t even remember Mom being pregnant so that shows how much I know I look up at the spiders again They seem to judge me I’m tired I tell them I just needed a break The spiders are unimpressed But so what Spiders have hundreds of kids and they usually get eaten by them So they’re not really a model of childcare I want to be aiming for Suddenly Mom screeches from the house No Violet Get down Stop There’s a huge crash And another yell Before I even think I’m on my feet out of the woodshed and running for the house Violet jumps when I burst through the back door I mean she really jumps Somehow she ends up on 5

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